The Air Outside So Soft
by keeponwritin
Summary: 'It's fine, though. It really is. I can grab the red wine in front of me and pour it down my throat before anyone will even notice because it's smooth, palatable. Things have been looking up for me. I won't get drunk off red wine. It's just wine.'


A/N: Welcome to my first Gossip Girl fanfic…? Who knew it would take the series ending for me to finally get on top of writing something for this series?

Like many people, I have many frustrations with the finale and the series in general, but I thought I'd challenge myself by _not_ ignoring any of it and accepting it in canon… in this story, anyway. In my actual life I will pretend none of that mess happened.

Seeing as I don't think it's that clear from the story itself, I will say: this takes place in the future, however, it's about a year before the "five year jump" that happens in the finale. So basically, this is my own version of a "four year jump."

Reviews are much appreciated and loved.

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I know it's not right, on any plane of existence. But there are these five seconds in which I'm sitting on this $5,000 sofa and looking at him and wondering which overpaid Upper East Side therapist they'll take him to when he finally catches wind of all of the things that used to be.

Then I try to shake it off with a guilty knot in my stomach, because he's a three-year-old, for God's sake.

But I can't. I've spent my whole life around rich people, learned to deal with their idiosyncrasies and their airs and the way their money seems to create an impenetrable aura of superiority, and I've accepted it, because I'm an adult now, and I see now what I could never see as a desperate, self-loathing teenager: that despite our Odyssean efforts, fate is fate, and free will is a lie. He didn't choose to be Henry Bass, heir to an empire, any more than I chose to be Dan Humphrey, sad pathetic sack from Brooklyn.

Things have been good for a while, but I can feel every drop of hope bleeding from me with the realization that, just by the virtue of his last name, a toddler is already infinitely more powerful than I will ever be.

Of all things, it's William van der Woodsen's voice that pulls me out of my thoughts, brings me back to the party surrounding me. He's telling someone nearby about my book that just came out and how well it's doing, even though it came out over six months ago and it didn't do well, probably never will do well, probably signaled the end of my book-authoring career and the beginning of my freelance editorial stage, which will then bleed into my maybe-I'll-start-a-blog era. But by 'probably,' I mean 'definitely.' And I mean it's already happened.

My hopes for my second novel changed with the weather. Some days I was so thrilled to be writing outside of my comfort zone, to tackle this beast so different from "Inside" but with familiar style and prose. Other days I was a hack, a useless hack and a one-trick pony with no imagination, no ability to write about anything that wasn't autobiographical. Those, in fact, were the majority of the days. The majority of almost four years trying to live off a meager advance, eventually resorting to borrowing from my dad until I finally mustered the inspiration to finish it to my liking. The story of a boy, coming of age in the 1990s in Los Angeles, struggling with alcohol and depression and his abusive parents. There was no way they could say this book was autobiographical.

But it didn't mean it was destined for greatness. It was still a disappointment, ridiculed by the Times and the Post and the Daily News. I once dreamed of my name being in all the papers. Now it's been there for the express purpose of mocking me.

It's fine, though. It really is. I can grab the red wine in front of me and pour it down my throat before anyone will even notice because it's smooth, palatable. Things have been looking up for me. I won't get drunk off red wine. It's just wine.

I stand up and try to shrink as much as possible so no one will stop me to talk. Maybe I can pretend I'm rushing to the bathroom. I nearly topple over my dad's new girlfriend. I've been meaning to tell her how Rufus used to play me the Reality Bites soundtrack as a little kid, maybe have a laugh over it, but I've already almost fallen on her and I don't want to seem drunk when I say it and make a terrible impression. Especially considering I'm not drunk. I get to the kitchen without saying anything but a sorry to Lisa and I locate the open bottles of wine. This is a celebration, I suppose, so there shouldn't be anything wrong with me pouring myself another large glass of wine without waiting for the sommeliers to come around and do what I'm fully capable of doing myself. I find a clean glass and turn my back to the party to serve it to myself when a voice makes the glass bottle almost slip out of my hand.

"So are you back to playing that Lonely Boy thing now? Because you know he's my favorite version of you." Georgina Sparks is not even close to the last person at this person I would want to talk to, so I turn and her flirtatious smile comes into view, and I take a big sip of my new glass of wine and shrug softly.

"I thought you were too busy trying to be Chuck's new aunt to care." I almost take myself aback. Once upon a time, I could spar with Georgina (and many others like Georgina) without batting an eyelash. But it's been a long time since I felt genuine animosity towards these people. Actually, it's been a while since I even saw a lot of these people. It's not the most cutting remark, and Georgina is and shall remain shameless for life, but there's still a discomfort that her new beau is Chuck's dead father's brother, and it shows on her face, even if for only half a second.

"Well, look at you," she says with a sly smile. "All sloshed up at an event like this. I'm proud of you, Dan Humphrey. Your extracurricular Internet activities in high school aside, you were pretty boring back in the day. Now you're just the life of the party, aren't you?" She eyes the glass in my hand and I don't even flinch. Judgment—moral judgment, especially—used to really bother me. The older I get, the less it does.

"I was not boring," is all I manage to protest. I want to fight the rest, but it would take all this effort that I don't feel I can conjure at the moment. I also want to bring up the time I cheated on my girlfriend with her, because despite the inappropriate timing (or just the general inappropriateness of even bringing up something so mythologically ancient), it feels like a good demonstration of how I'm not boring and I never was, but I'm distracted by the smirk across her lips. "Don't take this the wrong way, Georgina, but... how much did you slip the doorman to let you sneak in here? 'Cause I swore we gave him your picture and expressly told hi—"

"Serena invited me." That shuts me up well.

I can always find Serena in a crowd by the way her hair catches the light, but tonight especially she seems to invade my peripheral vision at all moments. It takes only three seconds from looking away from Georgina to find her, standing tall and smiling widely and wearing this short silver dress that looks like it's been painted on her. The corners of my lips twitch upwards. She's always been a vision, this shining ball of light, and she knows it. She knows she radiates and brings involuntary smiles because that's just what Serena van der Woodsen is. Light. Beaming, incandescent light.

Maybe I am a little drunk.

But it doesn't change the fact that these are the things I feel for Serena. Hopefulness, empathy, gratitude, love. I thought revealing who I was and what I did was going to bring chaos, hell on earth, fireballs raining from the sky. Instead it did what I always wanted in the first place. It placed me up on that mantle. I sat with Basses and van der Woodsens and Archibalds and for the first time, I knew I belonged there. And though my name meant nothing then, it was understood that I would someday _make _it mean something. I could climb my way up into their nouveau riche and make my name in Manhattan's upper boroughs, and that would bring me what I wanted all along: Serena. By my side. Supporting me. Being _with _me. Being with _me_.

Now I am. This thing I've been fantasizing about since I was 14 is my reality now. It's hard to grasp onto, but it's satisfying. I worked for this. I put my time and my efforts and my love into this, and I've crossed the finish line and the trophy is mine. I'm worthy. If they take away everything else, I have her.

Georgina's giving me a look now, and I dismiss it with a small glare because I'm not even sure what her look is signifying. But Georgina always thinks she knows what's going on. She wants to believe she's tapped into all of our heads and knows our secrets and unspoken desires. But even disregarding that that's blatantly false, my desires are all out there on the table anymore. I'm an open book, and it's liberating. I spent my teenage years and beyond hiding so much of myself that when I get up in the morning, I just feel light. There's no weight on my shoulders and there's no aching in my gut. Everything is so much purer.

"Just don't break anything," I mutter, grabbing my glass indelicately and walking away from Georgina's laser-like stare. There's nothing so discomforting as someone thinking you're hiding something when you're not. You begin to get paranoid. You begin to wonder if you are hiding something and you just don't know it. You walk around rooms full of people and you do everything in your power to avoid talking to anyone. You go to your room and you pour yourself a shot of whiskey because the wine isn't cutting it anymore. And then another. You do everything you can to try to make this night move faster, because you miss normalcy, normalcy in the way people wake up each morning, drinking their coffee and have their croissants, work, work, work, finish work, eat their dinner, collect themselves, sleep. That is a normal day. This is night. A weird, bizarre night, in a stuffy apartment with stuffy people.

I don't know how I manage to bypass everyone and get onto the elevator. I'm not even sneaking. I don't even try to hide myself. I just know I need a little fresh air in my lungs, and I suppose if anyone asks, that's my reason. It's not even a lie. I'm not a liar anymore.

"Hold the elevator, please!"

I know the voice, and that means I shouldn't have to look up, but I do. She's not the first thing I see, though. The first thing I see is a little yellow bowtie and an intrepid toddler smile stepping onto the elevator, holding onto her hand. My eyes travel upwards quickly, and there it is. Blair Waldorf's face.

It's nothing special. We're two people who have been distantly in one another's lives for some eight or nine years. Looking at her doesn't invoke anything in particular in me. She's a little like my great-uncle Nino in that way. I know him, and I recognize him, and I'll say hello when I see him, but there's no real reaction there on my end. It's no slight. Sometimes people just don't make that much of an impact, and I think that's okay. We all need extras in our lives, to flesh things out.

"Humphrey, what are you doing here?" I didn't notice until that second I'd been staring at the kid's bowtie. My eyes go back to her face, and this time, she's looking back, all furled brow and concerned-yet-accusatory expression, deep glossy lips and dark eyes. Her eyes are on me, really on me and only me, and suddenly I'm sure I'm going to vomit and I want to get away from her just so I don't have to hear about I ruined her designer pumps with bile for the rest of time. But she's already in the elevator, and the door is closing behind her and I feel like an animal that's been backed into a corner, more naked and vulnerable than I did the whole night. I open my mouth and it just hangs there because I can't seem to remember why I'm on the elevator either, and in the back of my head something is telling me this isn't fiction.

Blair Waldorf is looking at me expectantly, and we're on an elevator, but her hand is attached to a child's, _her_ child's. Blair is a mother. Blair isn't a petty teenage girl sitting on the Met steps in a headband, she's a mother, and a wife, and a businesswoman. I'm a drunk guy in an elevator. I'm nothing.

"Getting some fresh air," I manage to remember, and speak out loud without tripping over any words, but I think she can still tell, and she seems to nudge her son closer to herself, away from me. I try to make a mental note to be offended about that tomorrow. "Why, what are _you _doing?" The seconds of this elevator ride are ticking away. This isn't fiction. She glares at me for a second, pauses like she's not sure if I even deserve the information.

"I'm dropping Henry off with the nanny." Henry, I repeat in my head. It feels like I'd forgotten his name—that he even has a name. That he isn't just this ethereal symbol of Chuck-and-Blair's love for each other. He is a living, breathing thing, alright. One that's staring up with me with these big, brown eyes (Blair's features shine through a lot brighter than Chuck's) and I look away because kids don't know not to stare and adults should, but I can still feel his gaze. I can feel Blair's, too. It's almost one in the same. He's part of her, after all. I was there for that, for a few luncheons and soirees in Blair's honor, in Chuck's honor, in Chuck-and-Blair's honor, her belly protruding more and more every time I saw her, in slinky maternity couture. I shook her hand and congratulated her once, all the while thinking that it just didn't suit her—pregnancy at 22, motherhood at 23—and the smile slid off her face so quickly, I thought maybe I'd accidentally said it aloud. But I hadn't. She said 'thank you' and walked away.

The elevator stops with a small thud, and the kid—Henry—is still looking at me even as he's being tugged gently out the door. I just stand there, my head against the cold steel wall, until she's turning around and addressing me. "Well, are you coming outside or not?"

It's snippy and short and rude and so Blair, it makes me smile for a second. Then my smile makes me frown. I oblige without saying a word, walking behind the two of them through the lobby. Somewhere in the middle of the walk, I realize I don't have to follow her, that I'm capable of walking on my own and I know how to exit the building without her guidance, but it wasn't something I meant to do. I don't mean to stand by the doors once we're outside, either, but I do. I watch a brunette, our age, step out of a limo in 'Upper East Side casual.' I watch Blair greet her curtly, lean down to kiss the top of Henry's head, then the other girl—the nanny—take his hand and lead him into the car. I watch them both struggle with a carseat, and then I realize it's a carseat in a limousine, and I can't help the wide smile that takes over my face. There are people walking by that are giving me looks and I guess I look crazy.

But then the carseat is done. The door is closed. The limo is edging its way back into traffic, and Blair is watching it. I expect her to turn around when the limo reaches the stoplight. She doesn't. She keeps watching it until it's out of view.

Finally she turns on her heel and the look of hawk-eyed concern is immediately replaced by bemusement. I don't get it at first, but then I realize that it's me, and it's Blair, and it just seems to click that she's laughing at me. She takes a place next to me, facing out towards the city, and continues to look down the street towards where the limo was. Or... no, maybe she's looking at me. I'm not sure. Regardless, a second later, she's addressing me.

"So how long until you start writing short stories about him? With some ultra-clever code name, like... Harry Trout." In the back of my mind, I know it's a strong accusation. It's an accusation I should probably get offended over—that I would write something based on a two-year-old, that I would even be so desperate for material that I would _resort_ to writing about children. But I look at her, and there's this warm smile that belies her meaning. No wonder no one can ever seem to stick a good label to Blair Waldorf. Her name itself is evocative of a singular prestige, a kind of gold standard by which to measure all other Upper East Side girls, but in these tiny, subtle ways, there's a disconnect between what she says and what she does. Blair Waldorf as a brand, a nom de plume, is entirely copacetic. Behind it is the girl in front of me with hairline cracks. Flaws. But she lives in denial of them. I don't even know who gets to see them anymore. I briefly wonder if Chuck does.

I did once. But that's something I live in denial of, too. If I ever spent more than five minutes wading back into my memories of being with Blair Waldorf—touching, and feeling, and knowing, and understanding and breathing her, being against her and inside her and within her in every possible way and on every level, every day looking forward to the next time I could see her face and feel it all over again—I'm sure that my heart would collapse onto itself.

My fists are balled up and shoved into my pants pockets. For the end of spring, it's a lot more brisk out than I was expecting. I just peer down at my loafers for a second, building up the courage in my mind.

"You're a really great mom, Blair." I lift my head and look at her before I say it, and she looks up at the same second, and the words almost don't come out. But then they do, and I feel that naked and vulnerable feeling once again. I watch the emotions pass over her face. At first, her eyes are wide, doe-like, hopeful. Her lips are verging on a smile, and then the skepticism takes over. There's a small furl in her brow, and her lips purse together. I watch this all like it's a fascinating short film, like this isn't the most I've looked her in the eye without saying a word in over 4 years. She seems too preoccupied to notice, as her brow furls more and more, and her once-optimistic expression is now just cynicism.

"How do _you _know?" Her eyes are narrowed slightly, her mouth is in a straight line, but it's not malicious. In fact, it's a valid question. It reminds me, in some ways, of how things were when we were together. I bolstered her up a lot, and whether she knows it or not, she did the same for me. Supporting her became just as essential to me as it was for her. The secret that I kept for so many months wasn't that I wanted Blair, it was that I wanted _all_ of Blair. I wanted her at her best, the girl who brims with self-confidence, beyond the girl I met when I was 17. The one who doesn't even need to put others down because she's that sure of herself and who she is that berating others doesn't do anything for her. I wanted Blair on top of the world.

I think I had her.

"I guess I don't."

For some reason, this answer wipes all skepticism from her face, and all that's left is this small, sad glimmer in her eye, even as she smiles wryly and looks down to check the time on her phone. I catch a glimpse of it. It's later than I thought. These days, it's like the sun refuses to set.

"Well," she announces, like the past five minutes had never happened. "Enjoy your fresh air, Humphrey. I'm going back to enjoy the party. You know, the one that's on your dime." I have notions of stopping her, telling her something meaningful because once this night is over, once this party is finished, there's no mistaking what the future has for me. Everyone, officially, will know, and I can't waver. I can't let on that Blair is still a part of me indelibly, or that I'm fine most days but that the second our paths cross, I'm reminded of what I lost, and then I'm reminded that the only way I could've kept it was by holding on more tightly, but if I held on any tighter, I'd have lost myself in that and I'd have been no better than what she was running away from. "Seriously, Dan, Serena went out of her way to get ring-shaped cakes for both of you, the least you could do is get up there, fix your tie and smile for the camera."

She walks back in, and my eyes follow her through the glass panes while I thumb at the gold around my finger.

It was fate, really. Unavoidable predestination.


End file.
